David Goggins - Can't Hurt Me: How To Master Your Mind & Defy The Odds

Full transcript: David Goggins on London Real

2:39 This is London Real. I’m Brian Rose. My guest today’s let me ask you a question. Are you pushing yourself hard? Are you getting out of your comfort zone?

2:58 Are you putting pain into your life every single day? Or do you call your mommy when things get tough? You know, most people quit at 40%, that means you got 60% left in the tank, and that’s what my guest is here to talk about this week. David Goggins, three-time Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, holding the pull-up record, 4,000 pull-ups in 17 hours, a guy that ran over 203 miles. That’s what I’m talking about.

3:24 David Goggins is in the house. I’m super excited to share this episode with him, and he talks all about getting out of your comfort zone, about how to be uncommon amongst uncommon men, about how to look at something called your accountability mirror every day, about how to go into the cookie jar when you need some inspiration, and that’s just some of the knowledge that David Goggins drops today on the episode. I’ll be honest, probably the most powerful guest that’s ever sat in the London Real chair.

3:50 This episode will change your life, just like his book Can’t Hurt Me will also change it. Make sure you watch this to its completion and get out of that comfort zone and go and be great. This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is David Goggins, the athlete, speaker, soldier and New York Times bestselling author, often referred to as the hardest f*** on planet earth.

4:16 You’re the only member of the US Armed Forces to have completed Navy SEAL training, US Army Ranger School and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training, and you’ve competed in more than 60 ultra marathons, triathlons and ultra triathlons, running 101 miles in 19 hours, 203 miles in 48 hours, and breaking the world record for 4,030 pull-ups in just 17 hours. Your New York Times best-selling book and audiobook Can’t Hurt Me shares your astonishing life story of childhood physical abuse, poverty and prejudice, and shows a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear and reach their full potential. David, it’s a big honor.

4:53 Welcome to London Real. Hey man, thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Tell me, what do you think of London and the city, and are we hard enough here? Well, I know one thing, man, the f***ing traffic is hard enough. It is, it is brutal.

5:05 So just getting here, but you know, I’m having a hard time trying to find a place to run, but I spend a lot of time around, you know, the elliptical trainer. I’m making it work. I don’t, I don’t mind London at all. You know, I’ve been a lot of places in the world, but you know, London’s good. Yeah, you know, they actually have a history of being some pretty hard people, and I was here for the bombings, and 7/7 and ’07, and the one thing I noticed was the day after the bombings, everybody went back to work.

5:32 Like, oh, this is old school, this is like, you know, 1940, Battle of Britain, where it’s getting bombed every day, people just would just dust off and the next day they would, they just got back to it. That’s better. Yeah, so it’s kind of underlined, but yeah, the, the traffic will callous your mind. Well, I like learning more now after hearing that story, right? You have to take, you and show you some of this.

5:51 You can see the shrapnel is still in there from the bombings down by the Thames River. Instead, the bombings aren’t badass, but the mentality of the people here, yeah, no, it is for sure. You know, uh, we’ve been watching you for about two and a half years, man, so it’s just great to have you here, and we really even want to talk to you. And what’s odd that I’ve found, it’s been interesting with you, is watching you kind of change, because you seem to kind of change into a different person the last two years, two and a half years, from when I first saw you on Rogan and Bill Burr and Rich Roll, and with the book.

6:20 I know that you had to, to go really deep, you know, and get really vulnerable, and I know that’s something that, that maybe you hadn’t done much of before, and you’ve said before that writing the book was the most difficult thing in your life, right? And after that intro, most people would find that hard to believe, alright, that writing a book is harder than running 230 miles by far, or doing 4,000 pull-ups. But can you explain why, you know, what for me in that book?

6:47 So most of my life people didn’t know it, so you know, my mom got abused physically, mentally by my dad, and so I kept everything from her pretty much. So my childhood growing up, she was gone working three jobs, you lived in a $7.00 my place for a lot of the time, and she a hard way to go, her soon-to-be husband got murdered, all that crap’s in the book. So whenever I wanted to tell her something, it seemed like bad s*** was always happening, not just to her but to me also.

7:20 But at a young age I felt like I was a man of the house, so I didn’t want her to know anything about my wife, be like I’m what I was going through, and like, you know, I had to learn this ability, I still have learned this ability, you know, my dad beat the hell out of me. You know, school wasn’t great for me, you know, you know, I live in a small town with a bunch of, there are a lot of rednecks there, a lot of, a lot of people who were, who didn’t like black people. So everywhere I went I was having all these kind of obstacles hit me in the face, so I just hit it, so I became a really closed person because I didn’t want to stress her around anymore.

7:58 So I became this person who walked around, was like two sides of David Goggins. There’s one side that was like, I’m a tough guy, that was the outside surface, but on the inside I was a kid that was just hurting, that needed all kind of help, but no one knew it. I never talked about it because why? That showed weakness, and my mom didn’t need to hear it, at least that’s why I thought so. You know, for me to come out and be this vulnerable, because everybody thinks I’m Superman, so I wonder why.

8:28 Yeah, everything’s I’m Superman, so I had to tell them the truth. You know, in front, let you know, in the truth, it’s very important, and for me, a lot of years of my life growing up, I lied a lot because I didn’t have a lot of friends, thought socially, just all kind of awkward, I was hiding all kind of stuff. So you do whatever you can to create another human being that’s acceptable, that you think is acceptable in society, and when I did that, all that came out with a bunch of b******t, a bunch of lies, a bunch of filth, a bunch of nothing.

9:05 So for me to come out and write a book about the real David Goggins, it was tough, it was tough, but that’s the only way if I want to help people out. The only way I can cut to the surface and look, guys, gals, whoever’s reading this book, I am where I am now. You guys see this, it had been very easy to write a book about the hero David Goggins, but the hero’s not me here. Was the person reading the book, but I had to tell him where I came from to give people hope that, wow, that’s where he came from, he came from all these f***ed up obstacles and now he’s there.

9:44 I want to give people that kind of hope, so that’s why it was tough, because they gave people hope, I had to take myself to the sewer to show people, hey, I, you know, I, I come from hell, I come from hell, and a lot of, you, I created, not just society, yeah, society helped me out, but I created a lot of the hell that I had to go through. I made this picture out to be a lot worse than what it was. It was bad, but I made it out to be, you know, insurmountable.

10:16 So yeah, we could be our worst enemy. Why is the truth so important? You know what? Because first of all, it does set you free mentally, and it gives you a starting point. You have to have the truth to have a starting point.

10:33 So when you, like, if I’m lying to you about who I am, or I’m lying to you about whatever, there’s no starting point, there’s a false reality. You have to create the real reality. So that’s what I called my accountability mirror in my book. That’s the real reality. Where the f*** am I gonna start from?

10:51 So for me, I was lying to this line about that, so I had no starting point. Once you come face-to-face with who you are, you have a starting point. All right, I’m not real smart, I have no courage, I have no self-esteem, I have no nothing, nothing. That’s my starting point. Now we can move from there, but if I tell myself I’m strong, I have courage, I’m smart, and all these are lies, you continuously push that starting point backwards.

11:26 So that starting point is the truth, the no f***ing b******t truth now only you can tell yourself. So it’s a starting point, the truth is a starting point, and most people are surrounded by people that don’t tell them the truth. No lies, it’s too painful. It is, especially nowadays in this society. We like to surround ourselves, it makes us feel so good, those people who say it’s okay, it’s okay.

11:53 It’s not okay, it isn’t okay, man. And I, and I get it, society is changing and we love to feel wanted and loved, trust me, that’s all important, it is, but you have to have the truth from people. Hey, you’re not working your butt off hard enough, you’re not trying hard enough. We all think we’re trying hard, but what are you engaging that off of? Are you gazing awful?

12:17 Like I talked to this one kid the other day, college is kicking my ass. I said, what are you gauging that off of? I go, are you trying good? Yeah, I’m trying my ass off, I’m studying hard. I go, what are you engaged and trying hard off of?

12:30 Well, in high school I didn’t have to try at all, and I made great grades in college, I’m trying hard. You’re trying hard compared to what you did in high school, which was, it came easy to you. So your reality is something you created off of something easy, so you’re trying hard, it’s two hours of studying. I’m going to tell you a difference in trying hard and trying hard. Trying hard is something in your mind just doesn’t stop.

12:58 We where we know two hours isn’t enough. So it’s all about, you know, reality in which you’re basing things off of, and most people quit at 40%. Yes, that’s one of your most famous lines. Yes, I was here in that years ago. Yes, from you.

13:13 And so when we’re saying I’m trying hard, you, when you look in that accountability mirror, you need to look right in your eyes and say, who am I f***ing bulls***ting? Right, right, because most likely you’re at 40 percent or less, right? Much less, much less, because even though the 40 percent rule came up years later, when I was tours in 97 pounds and I was fat as hell trying to be a Navy SEAL, the scariest thing in the world to me, even to this day, was that that could have been the rest of my life.

13:42 I thought then I was trying hard. That’s the scariest thing in the world. I thought then, tours at 97-pound, working for Ecolab, spraying for cockroaches, making $1,000 a month, I thought that was me at my 100 percent potential. Come to find out a few years later, I wasn’t even near that. 106 pounds less, graduate Navy SEAL training, went on, do all these other things, looking back on that, that was me trying hard.

14:14 That’s why people got to understand what is in us. We have no idea until we start trying hard, and I mean really trying hard, where you’re obsessed with, hey, this is my new norm. My new norm is that, wow, this isn’t always fun, it’s not always meant to be fun, and that’s when you know you’re trying hard, is that. And so people listening to us that maybe are at 20% or 30%, how do they shatter that myth that they’ve been telling themselves, you know, about, yeah, I’m going hard, I’m going max, and yet they’re not seeing the results?

14:49 Like, how do they actually shake themselves out of that? Because there’s a great quote, I think it’s by this guy named Richard Feynman, who says the first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool. Hmm. So we construct these crazy Disneyland realities in our brain, right, all right, feed it back to ourselves. How do you shatter that?

15:08 Well, your first thing, you like, you’re fighting, we all have two people, we don’t have two people. Yeah, I’m not saying you’re crazy, we have the easy voice, which is that 20 percent telling yourself that you’re, I’m easy at 90% of my full potential, maybe 100 percent at that 20 percent. That’s that voice that we all love, that’s that very comfortable voice, that that’s that mommy holding you saying it’s gonna be okay, doesn’t care how good you are, just loves you, just loves you no matter how messed up you are in life.

15:41 That’s where you want to be at, so that’s that one voice. This other voice that we walk very far away from is the voice say, hey man, you ain’t doing s***. So we tried to get this voice out of our head completely, and we live over here in this land. So what you have to do first is turn up this voice over here, the voice saying things to you that aren’t nice, that it’s in our head, say, you know what, man, dude, you’re not, you’re not doing s***, you’re not, you’re not, I’m out.

16:14 Yeah, I mean it’s not putting yourself down. People take this the wrong way in this new society. I’m not saying to put yourself down, I’m saying listen to the truth, and the truth isn’t in the 20%, the truth is in this other part of your brain saying, look man, you’re wasting a bunch of percentage here. We have 80 more percent that we’re not tapping into, because in this other 80% is suffering, pain, failure, failure, failure, self-doubt, darkness, and then a whole bunch of light, but to get to this light you gotta go through all of this s***.

16:58 So I’ll have us know that we know, we do know deep down, yeah, I can get over here, but over here, man, this is much better, cuz I gotta go through this journey that is not fun. This just from 20 to 100 percent, this s*** in between is not fun, so we decide to live over here. So everybody knows how to do that, you know exactly how to do that, you know exactly. It’s, it’s not a magic trick, there’s nothing to talk about in that book that’s a magic trick. It’s all back down to a very primitive mindset of we just have to do it.

17:39 It’s like breathing, breathing becomes normal, like we don’t know that that, that we’re doing it. That’s how you have to live your life when that alarm clock goes off at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, your mind says no, you just say this is what we do. It’s what we do now, because to get to where you want to go, the amount of pain involved, am I saying physical? I’m not saying you got to break yourself off. The amount of mental pain, of how many times you’re gonna have to do something that you don’t want to do to get to where you want to go, it’s going to be, there’s gonna be more times you do something that that you don’t want to do than you are gonna want to do it, and that’s that, that’s your new norm, that’s your new norm.

18:25 So then it’s like breathing, and then once you do this over and over and over again, it becomes like breathing. I don’t want to live this lifestyle, but to get to the other side of this, I have to. So if you really want it, you realize what trying is and what trying is not. So and is that all about just discomfort, the discomfort zone that you talk about, callosum the brain? Is it about anything that makes you uncomfortable, or some things more effective than others?

18:54 Anything, basically it’s about do those things that that you don’t want to do, and once again I have to say very loud and clear, I’m not about being a masochist, but what I found when I was 297 pounds, so I’m not a guy that read a book and said, oh, there are the answers. The book, whoever buys this book, or if you don’t, I could care less, all this came from here, it came from me. Put myself on the hot seat, and then it said, okay, wow, okay, to 97, this is where my mind was at, to get to 187, this is where my mind went to, to be, to go through three whole weeks, to run tours in the five miles, to do 4,030 pull-ups, and I’m a natural born fat guy, even though I was born 175, I gained 125 pounds.

19:47 I was lazy, that’s who I am. I’m a guy likes to sit back, watch TV and eat pizza, like everybody, like everybody, like everybody. So I’m gonna tell you right now, mama voice, that’s the mama for here, put your feet up, I’m giving you, can cook, that’s right, take it easy, right, that’s right, and for a guy that never had that like me, I love my mom, but she was working. All I crave is that mama voice, please love David, love David. That voice got me to Georgia in 97 pounds, cook for you, she cook for, a matter of fact, the book I talk about it, when I got of the military, I started gaining this weight a lot.

20:24 My standard breakfast was a cinnamon rolls, you know, basically I think six to eight scrambled eggs, you know, half a pound of bacon, Fruity Pebbles, Lucky Charms, whatever, maybe that was my standard breakfast. So that was your way of getting away from the pain. That’s right, that was your vice. That’s my boy. For some people it’s alcohol or drugs or sex, are shopping, for you it’s food.

20:48 It was food, and also being comfortable, whatever I wanted, I did, and that’s where I started to see myself get further and further away from my true self, and your true self is found honestly in that very uncomfortable zone. So, but then you couldn’t take it anymore, you had an epiphany where you just said, I don’t want to be this guy anymore. Do you ever think that if it hadn’t have been that morning and that Navy SEAL thing had to been on the Discovery Channel when you got home from work, that that might have not flipped the switch and you’d be out there, 350-pound David Goggins right now?

21:23 The thing about it was, it wasn’t like it was an epiphany, I had this haunting voice in the back of my head, we a lot of us have it, yeah, we just ignore it, and it was there for years, so I knew in the back of my mind that I could pull off this whatever, whatever one. I knew I could. You knew you could. I knew that, but I, I was afraid of the work, because I wasn’t gifted with brains, I wasn’t gifted with god-given talent as far as, like, athleticism, so I knew to get to where I had to go, to be in the same playing field as these men, to even try out for this program, I knew the work was gonna be something that I didn’t want to even, even attack, so I was just putting it off.

22:11 But yet you did it because it haunted me, okay, the voice in my head. So you know what, man, you’re gonna die never even trying to reach your full potential, and how is that going to feel? So I’m gonna, I’m gonna live even while I’m dead, I’m gonna be, because I believe in a higher power, whatever maybe, I don’t know what it is, I believe that your mind lives forever, some spirit, something lasts forever. I’m gonna be haunted by the mere fact I literally just that’s what that was, wasted that life, that’s what that wasn’t, maybe you look back and here lies David Goggins, a punk, that’s it, and I get to live.

22:50 So whatever heaven or hell is, you’re in hell the rest of your life, the rest of your life, and there is a God, we’re so hope to God there is, knowing what I put myself through now, whatever memories I have, if there’s any at all, I’ll be a happy man, but I knew that I was gonna pay for this while I was living, around, I was gonna pay for this, because basically me, it was a huge sin. I’m basically just gonna sit here and this be a comfortable man and nothing to try, wasting your life is a sin. I said it is, I’m not gonna try.

23:25 You said that the one thing that always bothered you was when you died someday, if you meet your maker, that he would pull out a list and say, no, no, no, no, you were supposed to be this badass motherf***er, right? And instead you turned it into this cockroach slinging, right? Oh, booty pebble eaten and s***. Yeah, so now, and like you said, you almost have to live with that for eternity, right? So, so I talk about it is basically I visualize a lot, and so I visualize, always have, I always have, well, always have, but a lot of it was very disgusting.

24:00 Okay, it was like, he’s like, no, was me, what was me, which is work, yes, just as bad, yes, just as powerful, but I developed a reality that wasn’t real. That’s the thing we always do. We can have a great life, but we always build this reality around the one thing we don’t have, so therefore our great life we didn’t see it, we see the one piece of clothing we weren’t able to get versus the amazing things we have, so we focus on that. I was the king of focusing on the one bad thing in my life, the one bad person called me [expletive] though, everything bad I focused on that, but over here was a beautiful reality of my life, even though I came from nothing, where I could have taken my mind for the possibilities of where I can go if I work harder.

24:53 That was all over here, I lived in the filth over here. So basically what I started doing was, when I was 297, I thought about, my God, man, like, this gives my life and I thought, came, what does heaven look like? I don’t know, no one does. I imagine, so I was like, okay, I imagine that it was a big long line and you got judgment, and your God, let’s say your God, and I’m just David Goggins, big long line, and you’re talking to Jane, Jane Doe, Jane Doe goes by, and behind you is a big whiteboard, and the whiteboard has, like, just a piece of paper, and you pull it down, the next person in line is David Goggins, and on this board it has all this stuff on it, but I can’t see, come too far back in line, so I come up, I sit down, now you’re talking to me, David, congratulations, you made it to heaven, how you feel?

25:44 And right now I’m 300-pound man, Ecolab guy, I’m 71 years old, this is what I’m thinking at 24 years old, okay, I’m dead. I’m in heaven, you’re God, you pull the paper down and says David Goggins, I’m reading it and I’m looking at it, it has my name, but on this paper it says everything about you, everything, because God knows all. Now I’m looking at it and I’m seeing 185 pounds, Navy SEAL, changed people’s lives, all these amazing things, public speaker, buh buh buh buh blah, motivational, all the best-selling book, and look at God’s the guy, you, the name is right, but what’s on here is not me.

26:28 He goes, it should have been you, this was the life that you were supposed to live, but you didn’t try, so this is the life that you have. So what I think to myself is, are you in heaven, am I talking to God or am I talking to the devil, because I’m in hell now to see that that was supported in my life, but because I didn’t try hard enough, because I ain’t put forth every single bit of an ounce of pressure in my body into being better, they ended up being a 300-pound guy that made $1,000 a month, and I was fine there, that was okay. So that’s how my mind works, it works that way to see where, is this gonna take me, what’s the possibility?

27:13 So we’re all in a battle with our own brains. That all is, that’s all life is, it’s the most perfect thing in the world is your own brain, it can work for you or against you. And when did you start to realize that the visualization could work for you, and as, as opposed to focusing on all those bad things have happened, all the things you didn’t have, the people that called you names, all the stuff in Brazilian DNA, and you started thinking, wait a second, I just visualized this and now I can take it to the next level, next level, because the visualization got you through the SEAL training.

27:42 I think it did, and I was able to visualize the end, so before, so when I was 297 and I was all fat and out of shape, I couldn’t run a quarter mile, and I was drinking milkshakes and eating boxes of donuts, I visualized, man, how would it feel? So when, after I watched that show on Discovery Channel, for a brief moment I was so, there was twenty-two guys that graduated, I watched this segment on TV about these guys going through Navy SEAL training, and I couldn’t even say I want a great swimmer, I was afraid the water, all this crap, man, and I saw these guys as quitting, but the very Ennis has 22 guys, this commanding officers up there and it gives us great speech, I was like, man, I wonder. So I started visualizing me being the 23rd guy in these dress whites, sitting there with these guys, getting that Navy SEAL, you know, graduating this Navy SEAL training, that’s like, God, so I put myself there, I was like, my, that’s that’s an amazing feeling.

28:43 I put myself there at 297, not even able to do anything that these great men were doing. I said, man, if I could feel that, that would change my life. If I could just feel that one, it lasts for one second, you get that certificate, you walk across the stage and what’s next, but I didn’t know that then. My mind was that I thought I live in that moment forever, so I said, wow, man, if I could just feel like them, if I could feel like them. And what was that feeling you wanted so bad?

29:15 Respect, acknowledgement, victory. I wanted to win, not like beat somebody else, it wasn’t about that, I just wanted to go the distance. Everything in my life, and something got hard, I quit. If it was reading, that’s where, you know, I wasn’t great at reading, I wasn’t great at writing, so I just quit, I couldn’t catch on as fast as you, I had to work harder than you, so I quit. You know, I wasn’t great at things, so I quit.

29:42 You know, I’m not good at this, like, man, if I could just go that distance, that extra mile, to just go, it’s just to finish, I want to finish, I want to feel victory, and victory for me wasn’t winning, it was just finishing. So I said, you know what, if I could feel like these guys feel, it would change my life. But what I realized, the best feeling I had was when I was by myself trying to lose this weight, to lose it in literally less than three months, a hundred and six pounds, less than three months, and literally I started feeling victory just by putting myself in the battle.

30:26 It wasn’t about going to Navy SEAL training, it wasn’t about being the 23rd guy in that chair. I started realizing, man, just by going to war with myself every day and putting these challenges and these goals in, these obstacles, these insurmountable obstacles, so it wasn’t about losing 106 pounds, me losing 5 pounds was an accomplishment, me losing 10 pounds, and then 50 pounds, and the more I did, the more I gained confidence, and then the more I gained confidence, the more I realized, f***, these Navy SEALs, man, these guys can’t do what I’m doing right now. I had no coach, had no trainer, had no money, I didn’t know how to lose weight, I had no knowledge that what I was doing, I was just working, I was just sacrificing, and then through that, all these different tools started coming up, but I wouldn’t never found these tools if I didn’t put myself in a very uncomfortable place.

31:28 We all look for toughness, we all want it, but we look for in a comfortable environment. You will not find toughness in a comfortable environment. Those of you who are listening to this, who ever hear this, you will not find it. I will try and look for it everywhere, the only way you find it is to drown yourself in a position where you’re just out of sorts, where you can’t swim and you’re drowning, you’re drowning, you’re drowning in life, but you say no, what, ma’am, f*** that, I’m gonna figure out how to f*** backstroke or f*** something, I’m gonna figure out how to, and then do figuring out all these tools.

32:12 Your mind starts to, when you quit, your mind does this because you’re out. Once you say I’m not going to quit this, is the 40%, when you quit your mind says we’re done, so it doesn’t expand, there’s no expansion when you quit. When you say f*** you, uh-uh, this sucks, I’m drowning, I’m miserable, I’m suffering, I’m broken, but I’m not going anywhere, what happens to your mind as it does this? it says f***, he’s not leaving, so we got to expand, we got to grow, we got to figure this f***ing thing out.

32:50 So then these compartments in your brain starts to have, they have to work, they have to work, and then you start to engage parts of your mind that you’re never engaged before, but you can’t engage it by sitting back in these nice chairs drinking this nice water, talking to you, talking about what I want to do. That’s where, so that’s where the 40% thing comes in, it comes in when you’re in suffering mode and you say I’m not gonna quit, you’re forcing your brain now to operate on a level it’s not used to, but then it becomes used to it, because it’s telling you the whole time not to go there, it’s structuring an entire narrative about your whole future, like make sure you never go there. That’s right, but when you force it physically, it has to expand and adapt, force of pure survival reasons, it has to.

33:38 In your brain is the most powerful weapon, I talked about that in one of these chapters, your brain is the most powerful weapon in the world. Once you put away your phone and your computers and all that s*** we have nowadays, that’s great, we’re up-to-date, you know, you, but your brain is the only thing you have when you’re going through depression, when you’re going through hard times, you’re going through death, real life s***, you can’t Google that s***, man, you’re alone, you’re alone. You may have a shrink you’re going to, you may have a best friend you’re going to, but there’s 24 hours in the day where you’re alone in this brain, and your brain is talking to you in all kind of ways, and it wants to control you and pull you in these different pockets.

34:24 If you can’t control your own brain and your brain controls you, you’re f***ed. You got to tell your brain where you want to go and how you want to go and how you want to get there. You got to control it, if not it’s over, it’s over. And all of that you learned from your own brain, you didn’t Google this s***, you didn’t buy a book, it didn’t exist, this s*** didn’t exist, I couldn’t f***ing spell Google back in this, s*** didn’t exist, man. What existed for me was, okay, man, how am I gonna f***ing make this work?

34:56 And all I knew back then was hard work, the only way anything gets accomplished, that’s all I heard back in those days. You got to work hard, you got to work hard. I’m not getting how, I can’t get this paragraph, I can’t remember what the f*** in this paragraph to pass this test to get in the military. Read again, I’m still not getting it, read again, but if not getting it, write it out. And now so I started learning, okay, well I can’t, I gotta write out every f***ing thing I do, and then write it out again, and write it out again, and guess what happened?

35:30 I got it. I got it. I can’t swim, I’m negative buoyant, go back again. I can’t swim, go back again, go back again, go back again. I got it.

35:41 I realize if I keep going back and going back and going back until the s*** just becomes, your mind will say f***, okay, we’re gonna figure it out, it’ll find a way, because he is not going to stop. It’s like, I’m gonna try one more time, no, I’m gonna, it’s just like clock goes off, boom, we’re going back, I can’t read, right, we’re going back. I gave myself no way out, and my mind realized that, they said okay, we’re gonna adapt and overcome. Now you have to teach your mind this is the new normal, this you’re better with the f***ing program, that’s right, and as soon as it realizes that, that you’re serious, you’re serious, and it adapts.

36:24 I’m not playing a game, right, but if it thinks you’re playing a game, it knows it won’t adapt. It like a lot of people say I can, I say trying hard, they, your mind knows, man, it knows this guy’s bulls***ting me, man, it’s guys lying, there’s no truth behind it. When I was a Navy SEAL training, people go, how are you there for 18 months? The program is always six months long, you were in three hell weeks in one year, no one’s ever done that, how did you do that?

36:49 I talked about the new norm. When I lived in the $7 month place and I was growing up for a short period of time, I loved it, I don’t know any different, that was my norm. Once we move down that place, we moved to a $236 month place, I was like, f***, I never want to go back to that little piece of s***. But if he go back to a seven dollar month place and you realize this is where I live, that’s all I got, your mind says Roger that, this is home. So when I was going to Navy SEAL training for 18 months and going back through all the hard parts over and over again, I told myself after the first time I knew this could be a long journey there, my body was breaking down, it was, it was just how it was going on, I see, know what this is, my new norm.

37:41 So my mind said, is that going to work, like you go to work, you put your suit on, I go into suffering every day, every day, suffering, being broken, duct taping my feet up, stress fracture, shin splints, being broken, this is my new norm, and your mind says if we’re not broken, this ain’t normal, we got to be broken. So then your mind starts to get tougher and tougher and more callous. People, huh, how’d you run on broken feet, broken, broken shins? My mind knew this is how we operate, we’re in, we’re Navy SEAL training, this is what we are.

38:17 I became hell, and that became my new norm, I gave myself no way out. There was nothing outside these walls of hell, nothing. I became, I love God, but for a short period of time I became the devil, because that was hell. I became, I became the boss, the owner, the CEO of Navy SEAL training, that was my mindset, and that’s how you get through things, you put yourself, you immerse yourself in wherever it is and you become that, you become that, and give yourself no way out.

38:48 What’s how, like in the moment, is it hell, or do you get some kind of a weird neutral point where you’re just in the moment, being this guy, breathing and feeling the pain, what is that like? The scariest thing in the world about that, and have to always tell you this, man, because people hear my story, if they guess guys sadistic, I realize how, how the brain works, I figured out how the brain works. I’m a scared kid, and that’s what gives me so much power, I had no foundation and I built this off of just researching the mind.

39:24 The feeling you get is basically invincibility. You realize that you can’t do it all the time, when you need to do it, I know I can go to a place that I can live in, and when you know that you can run on broken legs, and you can do certain things that a lot of people can do, but they’re not willing to do, this power, this sympathetic nervous system, a fight-or-flight, and you’re fighting it, gives you this charge of energy of when you’re sitting there at 3:30, 4 o’clock in the morning and you’re duct tape and your feet up because they’re broken, and you’re doing it by yourself and you’re going through arguably one of the hardest training in the world, and these guys most of them are healthy and you’re going through it broken, and you already at a disadvantage, but you’re still there.

40:23 You can feed into that and tap into that for a lot of power, but if you look at it, well I’m okay, man, like I’m not gonna make it, but if you look at it as, man, I’m broken and I’m still here, now I’m fighting, I’m gonna find a way to get through this because I have no other place to go, it gives you a lot of power. And it’s not rage, you were pretty clear that’s saying you can’t get through that with anger. No, anger won’t get you very far, I thought it would, but what happens is, not just in SEAL training but in life in general, when things start to suck really, really bad, my brain and a lot of people’s brain don’t, they don’t go to the people that called you [expletive] or your dad beating you up.

41:09 Your brain says we get the f*** out here, this is miserable. So anger goes away a lot of times when you’re suffering, because your brain that says we got to run, we got to go, so that anger is not popping up saying, oh I’m going to show them, I’m going to show those people, no, there has to be a much deeper, if I say deeper, it has to be down to mineral, mineral soil, it is to be down to that nice mineral soil where nothing can burn. You can’t burn dirt, so it has to be down that low, that literally is submenu, that’s at the core, your soul, and, but you don’t find it unless you spend a lot of time with what you want to be in life.

41:58 You, I, I can’t give that to you, right, you can’t give it to somebody. When you find your true passion in life, and my passion for me when, like I want to be now, and get [expletive] about Navy SEALs, army, around, give a s***, I want to serve my country, I cared about, I want to be someone that I’m proud of, you’re proud of, that’s all that matters, right, of nobody else matters, not give a s***, I don’t give a s*** that I want to look at myself in American, I was so disappointed, that accountability, man, I talked about. I was so disappointed in what I saw every f***ing day.

42:32 I wanted everybody to love David Goggins, and a lot of people did, I didn’t love myself, but I knew a lot of us want to find peace first. some people say, may you always talk about this suffering and pain and s***, I’m at peace right now because I’m going to do that, right? You don’t find peace first, if you do, Merry Christmas, more power to you, more power to you. I found peace on the opposite end of finding myself, and no one really finds himself without going through trials, tribulations, suffering, accountability, and accountability is suffering, being accountable every f***ing day for doing right for yourself, for the people next to you, it’s measurable, it’s hard, that he is suffering in his eyes, right?

43:28 So principle, so you know even the smallest details, so that’s where it comes once you start finding that you’re excelling and you’re visualized in this future and you’re having this success, you, you use this phrase called uncommon amongst uncommon, to where you’re like, as you said earlier, f***, these Navy SEALs, they’re not these, these robots, these supermen I thought they were, maybe I can be better, maybe I can do more. Tell me about that, because that’s a transition. It is a transition, so when you come from where I came from there’s a lot of power, so the power comes from when you think that, my God, everybody’s above you, and then you put, for instance, I talk about the Navy SEALs in my book, I put every Navy SEAL on a pedestal.

44:14 It’s easy to do, it’s easy to do, you read the books about them, you see movies about them, superhuman, but what happens is once you drop your own limitations and you, so one thing we do bad in life is we put all these people above you, never put anybody above you, man, make it an even playing field, but you can’t make it an even playing field if you’re not working your f***ing ass off. I’m not saying not to respect people, you gotta respect people, but if you’re playing tennis right now, there’s tennis going on here in Queens, if you’re playing tennis and you’re playing Roger Federer, even Roger Federer is not here right now, but so you’re playing, well, Roger, best ever. Are you li, best ever, but I’m f***ing good at tennis, but Roger is the best ever, that’s in my f***ing head, and we’re playing a five-set match, Grand Slam, before Roger serves the ball, the first serve of the game, first serve, set one, game one, first serve, in your mind you think it, man, that’s the best f***ing person in the world to serve this hot tub out, Navy SEALs, so what happens is, two sets fly by, rouse your [expletive] smokes, is 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, man, I can play with this [expletive], but by the time you realize you can play with Roger Federer, it’s too late, it’s too late.

45:45 So that’s what I mean by that, don’t go into any competition of life, physical, mental, emotional, whatever it may be, too late, you gotta try so hard, know it, know that you’ve worked hard, hard as f*** to be on the even playing field. So I did that, so once I did that, your eyes open up, so so now you wanna see Roger Federer as Roger Federer, seemed as a f***ing tennis player, so now you’re competing on the first serve, should give yourself a chance to win. So I’m going to Navy SEAL training, after my first hell week, second hell week, third hell week, I said, man, I can compete with these guys, nobody compete with them, I’m gonna go another level, because I started seeing, I put these guys and a lot of people on a pedestal, but it also hurt me, it hurt me too because when you put people on a pedestal, you expect people to be at a certain level.

46:46 So I was living off of, wow, all these mythologies of what a special forces guy is, you get up, you don’t sleep, you run on broken legs, you know, you just like, you know, I really fed into all that s***, man, so it actually helped make me who I am, but I started looking around seeing, man, these are really normal f***ing guys, and that disappointed me, but it shouldn’t have, my expectations were of myself, I was grouping everybody. So that’s what I realized, being uncommon amongst uncommon, it’s really about yourself, it’s you against yourself, it’s not you against them, but kind of, it sounds like that because really these guys are uncommon, once you become a Navy SEAL or whatever, you become a big CEO, you’re now common again, so everybody looks at these guys as uncommon, but once you become one, we’re all guys again, kuroh, on the same group of guys, on the same fraternity.

47:48 So how do you separate yourself from the best? You’re gonna piss some people off, and you do that because they all think, whoever, CEOs, special operators, f***ing athletes, they all think they’re the f***ing best, there are alphas, females, males are alphas, so once you get in these groups and you’re like, you know what, I don’t want to be like you anymore, you want to be better, I want to be better than you, you want to push yourself even harder, I’m, I wanna, I want to put all this [expletive] – [expletive] shame, not to put you down, but there’s another level, man, you want to keep evolving, I want to keep evolving, right? There’s more to this, and that’s why when you describe yourself to people, SEAL is down on the list.

48:33 I mean, you talk about all these other things you’ve done, and that’s why you kept it going with these races, hmm, with the hundred mile race in San Diego, I’m from San Diego, right, and listening to that story, right by the bay, I think you did it, right? And, and the craziest thing about the book is you go for this hundred mile race, no training, right, Mile Mile Plex and Ritz crackers, I heard this story about 16 times, listen, write your stuff, but you said toddie point fatality point in my think was miles 79 or 70, 70, you said that’s when you had one of the most powerful moments of your life, it wasn’t three hou– weeks, no, it was running a one-mile track over and over again in what at one of them few most beautiful climates in the world, San Diego, California, and you found your what?

49:19 That’s when I knew, that’s when I knew, even through my three hell weeks and through Rangers, go out, I mean, I’ve gone through all these things already and I endure so much pain already, I thought, man, I reached the pinnacle, it was on a one-mile track. Why, why were you doing this? Because you were trying to be uncommon among, right, um, I was trying to raise money for Special Operations Warrior Foundation, it’s a foundation that gives a hundred percent tuition to special operators’ kids, so if, if your dad died, use a special operator, your kid goes to school, full tuition, great foundation.

49:53 So I found a foundation, it’s like I got found a right to know – to raise money, so I found this race called Badwater 135. I didn’t know anything about ultra running, knew nothing about it, call the race director up, it’s all in the book, I didn’t have the emails in the book for me and Chris Kostman going back and forth, and he basically says you have to qualify for my race. I was like – or semi pounds, I was a bodybuilder, now one of the big runner, I literally did 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer every Sunday, that’s it, that’s my cardio, I lifted weights and that’s what I did.

50:31 So I come up on a Wednesday and he says, you know, basically to qualify for the Badwater, he’s one hundred and thirty-five, one hundred thirty-five miles through Death Valley to Death Valley in the summertime. I thought it was a stage race where you ran like five or six days, could I know that was humanly possible. So I call on the Wednesday, he said you got qualified, there’s only two more races I could do to qualify for the Bad Water before the deadline ended, one was in San Diego, Saturday.

50:59 So Wednesday to Saturday, but three and a half days, three, it, you know, it’s not a lot of time, so I’m like, all right, I guess I’m gonna go try to do this race. So I go out here, have a blue lawn chair, Ritz crackers and Mile Plex, and I’m gonna see my crew person every mile, and I get to mile 50, I’m really detail it perfectly in the book, but at mile 70 I’m broken. I didn’t train for it at all, zero training for this race, and but this is, and I start realizing, man, my God, man, this, so I realized we are not even trying, because at mile 70 I was in the worst pain of my entire life, I was broken, I thought my third hell week, I was really bad off, no, there’s nothing I can ever imagine being worse than this race, and it was the easiest hundred mile race up everything in my life ever, but I wasn’t prepared.

51:56 And so mile 70, you know, I’m literally in this chair and I’m pissing blood, I’m crapping up my back, I’m, I’m in the worst thing of my life, and I’m like, I need to quit, I need to quit, but what I did though was, through my life I realized that your mind wants to quit, it’s called the one second decision. I call it the one second decision, when your mind is spazzing out, it’s like, we gotta get the f*** out of here, we’re miserable, let’s go home. And that mile 70, I was there, but I didn’t get it, I sat down, like, oh my God, my whole, my, my, my blood pressure dropped, I was dizzy, lightheaded, and the pain just came over me.

52:36 Can my, by thought I was done in my mind, so I stopped and I seen the work, I might quit, I knew I wasn’t, but what that might quit did was it kind of gave my mind all that damn, all that anxiety and let it go, come on mind, so he’s gonna quit, so we’re gonna sit here for a while and just sit here, we’re done. So I literally start to get food, hydrate, up, and I’m dizzy, I can’t stand up, so now after a while I stand up, nice, you know what, I’m gonna quit, but once again I knew I wasn’t. There’s a trick to the mines, you f*** with your own mind, that’s right, give ants like this black belt, that’s right, give you mine a little bit of space, because if it knows I have 30 more f***ing miles to go and I’m in the worst shape of my f***ing life, my mind’s gonna say no way, no way, dude.

53:33 So it’s so you can’t give us a space, say you know what, if I can stand up and walk one mile, this would be the biggest achievement of my life, because I’m, I’m deaf right now, I’m deaf, if I can get to walk one mile, Debbi the best day of my life, I walked a mile and I won’t go too deep into it, all I got, two miles, hmm, maybe I’ll try three, I did this tomorrow, 81, yeah, my 81, the person crewman was like, hey, you know what, basically I knew I wasn’t going to make the time, I was crawling around that track, crawling, and this is, this is the Eureka moment, this is it, out of my whole life, this is the one time, this is when I realized that we are f***ing way, way, way cutting ourselves short, were saint my life, thought I was gonna die, never felt this kind of pain before in my life ever, never again, am I 81, when I knew it was gonna make the time, I ran the next I read 20 months, I did 101 miles, I was averaging like 10, 10:30s, coming from death, being able to barely walk, now I’m running 10:00 to 10:30 for the next 20 miles.

55:03 When I got done with that, I sat back down in that chair that was not my porta potty, and it was my ex-wife, she actually backed the car up on this grassy knoll where I was kind of, you know, camped up at for 19 hours and six minutes, I ran 201 miles, ran, walked 101 miles. I got home, I detailed well in the book, I won’t go through it well, it was a horrible situation. I was in the worst shape of my life, passing out s*** on myself, peeing blood, I got in the tub, I had this pond stroll on the wrong, because in San Diego in November it’s chilly, so I’m freezing, she puts the water on me, and I’m peeing what looks like dirt, it’s just dark, dark, dark, it’s like dirt coming out of me, and we have a discussion and she calls my mom up, my mom has a doctor friend, the doctor friend says you gotta get him to the hospital, his kidneys are down, this is going on, this is going on, he, you know, he could die, and this is where the story gets kind of crazy.

56:10 It was the best and worst feeling ahead of my life. I had put myself in a situation where I was, where I opened my mind to the fullest capacity to pull this off, and all the pain, I mean it was, it was life, the pain sensors were going through my body, I’m in this tub in the fetal position, the water’s coming down on me and I’m just sitting there, just jackhammering hot water hit me, I’m jackhammering, peeing Coca-Cola out of me, I’m like, God, done this, and she was really easy to the hospital, it was the best feeling of my entire life. Nevertheless, how do you say that, I probably could have died, and I literally pushed myself to a place that very few human beings would ever be willing to go, and I got to examine myself, I call it the live autopsy, where we find out why someone died after they’re dead.

57:15 I got a chance in 19 hours and six minutes to put myself in the worst possible condition I could possibly be in and figure out how to get through it, and get through it, and all this pain going through me was confirmation that I had just done something that I thought was humanly impossible, and I didn’t wanted to go away. You’re reveling in that moment, thinking, man, look what I just did, look what, look what the human mind can do, right? And from that 19 hours and 6 minutes I lived an entire lifetime, entire lifetime, people live a hundred years and never experienced the highs and lows that the journey I did, all of it in 19 hours and six minutes.

58:11 I lived a hundred years, and it would, I try hard to put it in the book, but no one would ever be able to really understand what that was about, and I was like, if I die here today, I’m fine with that, because I just literally pulled off something that I never thought was even humanly possible. Did that evolve you to, like, the next level, and make a lot of the other endurance stuff you did after that look differently, did you look through it to a different lens, were you able to hold on to that feeling and that knowledge? The knowledge, yes, but it made a lot of things very different, that’s where the uncommon came in, okay.

58:54 Once I got through it, that race, November 2005, that’s when I started really looking at people like, man, you’re cutting yourself way f***ing short, break, right? I started judging people like, ma’am, I wish I could give you my break, I can’t tell you, because you’re gonna then put a title on me, he’s crazy, you’re born gifted, you’re born this, you have a higher pain tolerance than most people, you’re gonna put a title on me to give yourself a get-out-of-jail-free card, because if you put a title on me, he’s crazy or he’s gifted, then you can say he’s just a special human being, right? So now you ain’t got try that f***ing hard, right?

59:32 So if I give it my f***ing brain, tell you where I come from, tell you how I figured all this s*** out and say, there you go, and I got a look at my leg, I look at your life then, you gotta say f***, this guy’s not special at all. We all have that capability, but it takes going through that twenty, got twenty percent to that hundred percent, and all that s*** in between to get to that light that you see at the end, that f***ing tunnel, and sometimes that journey between 20 to 100%, it’s so f***ing dark in there, but she got staying there long enough to where there’s just a little bit of light coming through to her, your depth perception, you start to get that depth perception, you know, okay, I got a little bit illumination now, but you don’t stay there longer than f***ing an hour to two hours, that would be like going to that concrete f***ing tomb, you’re never going to have that little bit of light, then you can now see in the dark just enough to make out shadows.

1:00:35 You quit too early, therefore you can’t make out the light in that f***ing tunnel, there’s always light in the tunnel, there’s always some crack, there’s always some imperfection in every f***ing tunnel, but it’s dark at first, your eyes got to get adjusted to that s***, man, and until they get adjusted we quit because it’s too dark, it’s scary in that s***, so we get out. Stay there long enough, allow your eyes to find that one, one little bit of light in there, focus from that light, and then you’ll be able to f***ing wick your way through the tunnel, and that could be the most beautiful moment of your life, or the reason you here here to exist. It’s the reason why I was able to live the life I live today, I was able to continue living it because that you went there, that 19 hours, it wasn’t Navy SEAL training, that would have been great, that’s where it ended, but that 19 hours and six minutes gave me a whole nother reality.

1:01:33 How many people you think that have been on this planet and ever have an experience like that, we’re talking 10 billion people, like how many you ever think got to feel like David Goggins felt, jackhammer and in that tub, piss and Coca-Cola? I mean, a lot of people have been there because, you know, whatever, but they haven’t been in that situation for thirty miles, right, to be, to get that clarity, to get that lie clearly, I had to go 70 miles first, be broken, be in the sewer, have nothing left, nothing left, and say okay, I’m gonna now go 31, that’s when the race start, that’s when it started, right? So a lot of people have been broken down, but to say I’m gonna go to start line up a 31 mile race with s*** on my back, blood down me, deplete it completely, dehydrated, no nothing, I’m gonna go to the start line of this s***, looking like that, and see how it turns out, people don’t show up to race like that, but if they did they could see something more beautiful than they’ve ever known their whole life, or for a hundred years.

1:02:46 And the thing about it is though, don’t take this and say I need to go there to find this, it’s all relative and it’s not always in the physical that we find this, although that can be good, because it can be good, it’s real, it’s very real, it’s the truth. It might be that you’re this, you know, that you don’t feel like you can go to Harvard or Yale, don’t you know, and you got to study so much harder than everybody else, if they’re studying three hours you’re study in three days, you can find it there at the end of that, say my God, man, you have no idea, because no one will ever know besides one person, and wouldn’t even talk anymore, one person got chance to really experience that with me, but no one really knows what I experience but me. So that’s what makes you powerful, there’s no cheerleaders, there’s no f***ing crowds cheering you on, that’s what makes you powerful is when the only cheerleader is you by yourself, that’s what forces you, it’s not come on man, you can do this, and you got twenty people or the Boston Marathon with 26.2 miles of people cheering you on, and you’re bulking at mile eighteen, nah, man, you alone on a one-mile track, and that one-mile track could be anything, and there’s no one f***ing there but you, and then you have to do a live, a live autopsy and dissect, and those demons come out, man.

1:04:21 We all got them, where they got f***ed-up childhood, whether you’re a bully, whether you think that you’re stupid, whether your mom, whether your dad went there, whether you’re gay, lesbian, where the f*** you’re don’t do in your life, that judgments there, everything becomes so real and clear, you’re talking to yourself so negatively and you’re fighting these f***ing voices saying why the f*** are you doing this? But if you get through it, on the other side of that thing, man, is a whole nother world that very few people know exist in your mind, but it’s there, it’s there, it’s there, it’s there, just trust that and put in that pain and work, and there’s only one person that knows if you did it, and that’s right, it’s you, and you, and you got that voice inside you and it’s gonna come out sooner or later, right, right, it can come out today or in ten years or fifty years from now, but it will come out, right.

1:05:12 Most of your life it feels like you’ve been in a battle with yourself, huh, but like the last two years it feels like you are connecting with other people, and you’re like giving something back to this, like, human species, and this is like a mission from you, but this is like, is this phase two of David Goggins? Because you know before, up to then, it felt like I’m trying to figure out my s***, I’m trying to battle my own demons, I’m trying to be number one in my brain, all right, but like, you know, if you hear some of the things you’re saying now, it’s like I want to show you, the read my book, you’re the hero, not me. If you watch your Instagram post, it’s like, you know, what’s your story, what are you doing today, what do you make of this noise?

1:05:51 Funny, man, I’m not trying to do this, it’s happening through you, I’m not trying to do this, like, so people go, you know, I post once a week, I’m not trying to get more followers, I don’t give a damn if you like my message or not, literally. We all are, we all are teachers, and some people respond to different teachers. Like leadership, every goes, man, how do you become a great leader? Everybody leaves differently, everybody follows different leaders, I happen to be one of millions, millions of teachers, but we every one of us are teachers.

1:06:33 I’m a teacher, all I’m doing is I’m putting out the f***ing damn, here’s the information, man, this is where I know some people learn from David Goggins, some people despise David Goggins, but I have people who are in my classroom, I miss a teacher, either you show up the f***ing class or you don’t. God happened to bless me and say, look, I’m gonna put you on earth, I’m not going to teach you a lot, that’s how you become a great teacher, you become a great teacher being the student, and I was a student in the class of one. I didn’t, I had a poopy past blaming people mentality, but I learned, and once you learn by falling on your face, that’s how you learn, you learn by trying to create a lightbulb over and over and over again, and then you get knowledge.

1:07:33 So now I’m a teacher, and some people say, wow, man, your story connects with me, so all I’m doing, it’s not like I’m saying, oh, I want to come out here, people f***ing follow me and love me, all I’m doing is doing what God put me here or whatever put me here to do. You’re channeling some higher power, that’s it, so I’m a teacher because why, I don’t give a s***. Are you sometimes surprised, like what the f*** is happening to me, I’m turning into this guy and I’m leading these people, or does it feel supernatural?

1:08:00 You know what, you’re introverted guys, doesn’t come natural, it doesn’t come now, so matter of fact, I hate this interview right now, not because of you, I’m uncomfortable, I’m uncomfortable because for several years growing up I stuttered, so I’m nervous around people, I still Bala’s these demons every day, they’re still there, man, I’m still that guy that lived in a $7 month place, just because I’m not living there anymore, I’m scarred, scars remind you that your past is real, it’s real, man, can’t run away from it, it’s a part of me, I carry that s*** where I go, it’s not, it doesn’t define who I am, but it’s a scar, all these things scarred me, but that’s why people connect with me, we all have mental scars, physical scars, our scars remind us that the past is so very f***ing real, so I’m a teacher saying that it’s okay, man, the scars are real, but you can still be a bad motherf***er, you can still be a very, very dangerous motherf***er.

1:09:12 What was the hardest part about going back down into the past and into those sewers and revisiting these old memories and trying to make sense of them and trying to remember what really happened as opposed to the version that, and I mean the abuse with your dad seemed pretty, pretty real, no, should I have said real s***, but it was, was that the hardest part, or did something ever, did it trigger stuff into you physically and mentally where you were like, whoa, you know, you know, you realize, you guys, how much you try to block it out, you realize how much of your life you just shove on the rug and you just live on top of that rug until you pull that rug out and you fall into this f***ing pile of s***, and then when you’re in this pile of s*** that we literally carry around with us all day long, but we just put it way back here, but we’re carrying this big f***ing rucksack, this big backpack of s*** every day, but we think we’re not, we think we’re not, we think, I’ll, we’re good, I’m good, so right, to go back in that s***, what was hard about it was trying to find power, trying to find power in filth, trying to take all this negative s*** and say how the f*** am I gonna use all this s*** to propel me forward, that’s the hardest part about it, because all you want to do is lay in it and they say, God, man, like, just let me die in this s***.

1:10:38 So as you’re going back to it, it almost makes you say how the f*** did I get here? So I went back to it, and I went back to way before this book, because you have to go back to it before you go forward, you know, we all want to start now, I’m 44, I’m not going to go backwards, I’m gonna go forward, so that’s not how it works, it’s not works. So you had been processing this for the last ten years, years, yeah, you can’t speak about the way I do unless you process it, you go back a million times, you battle it, you overcome it, even though it’s gone, you go back in your mind and face it and overcome it, with my father, when I was 22, I believe I was 22, 23, I had to go back and face him, actually face him one-on-one, and that’s really when I realized I had to go back to the, look, if your knee hurts, a lot of people focus on your knee, it may be your [expletive], if it’s your left knee it might be a right hip, we were never focused on the hip forcing the knee, so for me I’ll focus on this surface s***, so when I went to the Air Force I quit in training, because I learned how to read and learn how to write, I learn how to swim, but a second something hard came up, I went right back to her, I always go like, God, man, I thought I fixed all this s***, no, my left knee was hurting and I worked on my left knee, it stopped hurting, but my f***ing right hip was the f***ing problem, so my right hip was my dad, right, the crux of my problems wasn’t anything to do with everything in life, it was, dude, my father, because

1:12:25 That’s where it started, it started there, the origin of the story, it started there, so I went back to the, to the, to the start point, it had a face where all this happened, with a mindset, started the mindset of, you know, all this s***, being beat for no reason and feeling like you’re nothing and feeling like you got a lot of gain, friends, and you know my mind was developed but it wasn’t developing properly in that hell, you can’t develop a mind in the hill I lived in. So what happened was, people blame me back in the day, my God, you lied about this and you did that, let me put your f***ing ass in that s***, go, go be born in that s***, man, let me see how you come out, let me see y’all secure in your foundation you are when you get beat for this s*** doing nothing because he’s drunk and he’s mad at you, so you learn to survive, but surviving doesn’t make you win, surviving makes you a f***ing cockroach, it makes you just do that, survive, it makes you lie, how can I get through this, how can I get around this, versus being a man, it’s standing up for what you believe in, your cowards, so you lying, you manipulate, but that’s what those foundations, a lot of people are beat mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, so it makes you a cop, but then people blame you for how you act when you’re thirty f***ing years old, they don’t know where you come from, they don’t know the hell you had to endure, why your mind is the way it is now, so you have to go back and fix that s***, you got to go back to where this chick came from, like

1:14:12 A fix it, now you go back and fix it, so I went back there, I realized this f***ing guy, look at my dad and forgive him without saying sorry. No one said sorry. I’m gonna go back and say, why were you so f***ing nuts? He realized, oh, you never went back, you never f***ing went back, it would ever f*** you up while you beat the s*** out my mom, me and my brother, you never went back, so you took all that s*** out on us, and therefore that’s how the generational s*** goes on.

1:14:43 My dad was an alcoholic, my dad was a druggie, I’m a druggie, that’s how that s*** goes on, no one stops it. I stopped it, so that’s what that caused me to do that. You forgave him in your own mind? In my own mind. He died a few years back, I didn’t go to the funeral, but I don’t hate him, I had to let it go, it was over, that part of my life is over, I don’t hate you, you’re my father, I respect you for that, but also know why you were the way you work.

1:15:16 You have to understand the demon before you can fix it, man. Now, what about the crazy observation, I’m sure you’ve seen, you heard this before, is that David Goggins doesn’t exist without that childhood? It’s a true story, it’s a true story. I had to go through all that s***, but guess what, like I said, something put me down here to go through that hill to see the limitations of a human mind. I believe that I was here to do that, to come, literally no one taught me anything, man, to say all right, man, what are we capable of?

1:16:00 I had to be that guinea pig, and now because I was that guinea pig, other people are learning for me, not having to go through everything I went through, right? But now I have the answers to a lot of these for my students, people who are listening to me, I have answers for you. Some people really understand how I think, the very primitive way and how I think, some people, this is like, hey, man, you, you got problems, you have issues, I got it, you need another teacher, but a lot of people say, you know, I get it, man, but the people who get it, a lot of people either want to be better, come from a very dark place, come from a place where they’re f***ing hiding from something and they don’t want to be exposed.

1:16:56 Those that people understand Can’t Hurt Me, the book Can’t Hurt Me, those people are saying, oh man, f*** this, man, it’s time to be exposed, because the only way you can go ahead and live is you got to say f*** you to everybody. F*** you, I don’t care how you judge me, I’m going to tell you the truth, I’m gonna tell you I’m f***ed up, I’m gonna tell you I’m a liar, I’m gonna tell you I’m a drunk, I’m gonna tell you I’m this, I’m that, real f*** you maybe, but guess what, look at me, f*** next year, but you gotta come out with that, f*** you, you got to come out with it, you gotta be ruined your self, be true and be vulnerable and let it put it all out there, that’s your start line, that’s your start line. I should start my, that’s a, that’s 70 miles in for a lot of people, and that’s the thing about it, man, to get to the f***ing start line is a journey, so some people, you know how sometimes you’re in this f***ing big long marathon, let’s say New York City, something to say, man, it took me an hour to get to the start line.

1:17:53 It may take you four years to get to that [expletive] in real life, just to get to the start line, and people don’t wanna do that, I get it, it took me f***ing 25 years, 26 years to get to the start line. What’s been the biggest moment since putting this book out there, what’s been the thing that’s just been like, oh wow, I never saw that coming, or I never thought I’d hear that from someone, or the emails I get from people, the thousands upon thousands of emails and me change people’s lives, so we thought, so we sort of a million copies in seven months, self-published, so get your way, people were throwing it hundreds of thousand dollars in checks, yes, you said no, I’m doing this David Goggins my way, oh why? Because I wanted to be authentic, I wanted to be real and true to myself, so how I did the audiobook, which has never been done before, and we sold over 650,000 audiobooks, it’s the hottest audiobook out there right now, cuz it’s f***ing good, it’s crazy.

1:18:51 So basically it’s like a podcast, radio show, audiobook all in one, it keeps you very entertained. So I wanted to put myself in it, I didn’t want anybody owning, I want anybody own it, this is my life, no one did this but me, so I wanted to make sure that every f***ing cuss word, every word in there was real and raw and true to how my life is, and the biggest autumn moment for me was this kid that came from absolutely nothing, I sat behind Michelle Obama in her shoes book, so my book came out with Michelle Obama’s, and she sold like [expletive], I think week one, like three million copies. You know you can’t beat that, I sat behind her on Amazon list, number two for 12 weeks, and I’m just David Goggins from nothing, came from nothing, and it’s just a story about real life, real connection with people, it’s not some life about, look, man, I was blessed, I had some silver spoon, it’s about not, like, you know how in the movie it has this great ending, and I talked about the start line, the truth, even though I made it, I went back to that f***ing start line after I made it, 100 more times, that’s real life.

1:20:13 Real life is you get to the start line, you think you see the finish line, if something happens, man, life happens and you go right back to the f***ing start line again, you say f***, and sometimes you get pushed way back in that start line, so that’s what the book’s about, mass real f***ing life, it’s my life in the, in the raw form, but through that book you see a whole bunch of takeaways, man, takeaways, and I call it the indestructible toolbox, it’s all through there, some taking souls, the cookie jar, cookie jar, taking souls, you know, the accountability mirror, uncommon amongst uncommon, we talk about the most powerful weapons, your mind, about how to literally, everybody says they have no f***ing time, you have no time because you know you haven’t really saw how your day is, we put so much fluff time in there, about on your foot, how much, you know, how much time are you on your phone, and I take all the excuse away, that book takes every f***ing excuse away from your man to where you’re like, f***, well I guess I gotta get after it now, yeah, so that’s what it does.

1:21:21 You know, I was reading through this and I found like little parts of my life where I remember doing little things like this, and I went to MIT, when I was there, like 20 years old, it was a battle of my mind, I was trying to like study and get these grades, and I remember writing things all around my mirror and all my Walter, and finals week like, you f***ing f*** you, f***ing piece of s***, how bad do you f***ing want this, cuz it was like seven days of f***ing hell in my own brain, and you know it was all about whether you were gonna break or not, right? And so I read that, I was like, oh s***, that’s the accountability mirror, yeah. And then I remember cookie jar, I remember later going to Wall Street and having a moment where I’m like, wait a second, these guys were bad motherf***ers, they’re Masters of the Universe, and I was like, hold on a second, you went to MIT, is wrong with the f***ing best, that’s right, you’re a bad motherf***er, you got straight A’s when you were a sophomore, f*** these guys, that’s right, and that’s your f***ing job, rookie, Java cookie jar.

1:22:12 We forget when we get around these people or we getting hard times, whatever maybe, we forget how badass we are. Take a time, go, go back through your life, I guarantee you there’s something in there, like MIT, you can’t forget that s***, man, that needs to be like almost number one in the rolodex. We get around some bad motherf***ers like this, I’m good, yeah, I’m okay, dial that in there. How many you [expletive] could have went there and endure that mental hell literally, it’s not, it’s just first of all getting in my tea, but grinding through it, no, that’s a big cookie, man, I went back to that jar a lot of times without even knowing I was doing it.

1:22:56 Yeah, must get use that for 10 or 15 years, you know, just always go back, oh yeah, remember, okay, I’m back on point, let’s go, and remember some of the days you spit studying, oh yeah, the hours, all night, the months, oh yeah, the months, I can’t even imagine, the months, caffeine pills, oh yeah, all night, slapping myself, whatever it takes, and it was no one watching, no one is on me, yep, and it was, yeah, how, and then I knew if I slacked, and I was the one I had to f***ing answer to, that’s right, and it didn’t matter and nothing else mattered, they don’t keep you in MIT if you’re okay, if you’re trying, they don’t keep you in MIT if you’re trying, no, you gotta be excellent, man, period, the whole time, yeah, this stuff is real, man, and one other example I found when I came over here and I was in banking, and I’ve called this the immigrant man sometimes, where I got here and I was like, can I do this, and then I was like, wait a second, I can do this better than these [expletive], and I folk with a bunch of immigrants that come to London, and therefore they’re first they’re intimidated and they’re like, wait a second, I can do this better than these guys, right, you know, and it’s just that flip of the mind.

1:23:59 That’s uncommon. Yeah, I’m most uncommon. Yeah, you gotta think that way, man, cuz you think the other way, you could bare yourself. What’s next for David Goggins? I mean technically the next 20 years you’re gonna be going back to the start line, okay, so you’re gonna go back before you can go forward, right?

1:24:17 I mean you must know it’s still a battle every day. It is, so like I said, man, I don’t know everything at all, but to continue to stay in the battle to get more knowledge, the second you put, so this what happens, a lot of people who are motivational speakers, and I don’t consider myself a motivational speaker at all, I’m not even that, I don’t know what the f*** I am, I’m a teacher, you know, whatever it is, but the second you think that you gotta figure it out, a lot of us, like for instance, I people who graduate Navy SEAL training, people who graduate anything in life, MIT, they believe if I graduate MIT, that’s it, that’s the pinnacle, that’s when you failed, that’s when you no longer a teacher, that’s when you no longer a leader, she no longer anything, all you are is an MIT graduate, all I would have been is a Navy SEAL, most people in society have that mindset, they put this Mount Everest in their mind, whatever it may be, MIT, SEAL training, Ranger school, CEO, Mount Everest is there, they climb it, they put the flag in there, and they immediately realize I’m at the highest elevation in the world, so what must you do?

1:25:34 I got to get down, that’s the Death Zone. They don’t figure out, I walk, I stay up in this s***, how long, I can’t stay up here, my own oxygen, so I’m gonna bring up about 50 f***ing bottles of O2, because I’m not coming down from here, and that was my mindset, so right now for me to continue to teach people, I gotta bring a whole f***ing bunch of bottles up on my Everest, because once you start coming down, it’s over, it’s over. When she gets to the top, you guys stay up there and keep looking for another Mount Everest to climb, but it takes a whole bunch of oxygen, how much to suffer to do that, so you never arrived.

1:26:21 So right now I know I’m still not [expletive] all, I’m doing is I’m giving you 44 years of knowledge of what I gained, story’s not over yet, I have more than hours to give, which means I gotta hike up some more f***ing bottle on top of Mount Everest, and that’s what you’re doing now, so I’m doing that out there as a firefighter and going back to the, going back to the grind, man, seeing how the mind works, hanging out with 20 year olds, hanging out with 20 year old [expletive] to make fires stop, I mean that sounds like Peru, it’ll work, it’s tough work, man, but it’s even perfect for me now is that my health is really good, so now I’m getting back into the running aspect of it, the racing, the, the lonely hours of training, that’s where I really, really saw a lot of it, it went in the firefighting, you know, even though it’s brutal, the Navy SEAL training brutal, it was in these long 30, 40 hours, breaking the pull-up record, feeling, getting these highs and lows and wanting to leave in the same man, it’s hard to think about, you have a hundred more miles to go and you’ve already gone 100 miles and your body’s broken, there’s not a lot that, there’s, there’s a lot that goes into that, man, and you think a lot out there, there’s a lot of growth, right, in that, so that is gonna be your Mount Everest with the oxygen bottles going forward, that’s solo work.

1:27:52 You think solo work, that’s how you can expand and evolve and maybe send some more knowledge back to us, it’s all about the solo work, maybe that’s, that’s where you really dive into it. I always see that about you, you know, you always, it, that seems to be your thing, man, that’s like where you’re going to, like, look for that light, you know, going out there on your own, doing that stuff, it’s hard to find knowledge in the group, cuz everybody’s talkin, is too loud, it’s too noisy, man, like, you know, you go to New York City, you go to London, traffic, everything going on, everybody’s preoccupied, when you’re a lone man in that space, there’s no horns honking, there’s no people yelling, so in that quiet, there’s a lot of darkness in that quiet, man, you figure out a lot of stuff, gonna be bad or good, you figured out.

1:28:37 Yeah, if you stay, yeah, just wondering if you have advice to the younger people of the generation that have been watching us today, and, and you know they’ve grown up in this different world, you know, where everything’s go global and everything’s right there, it’s a world of comfort, it’s getting more comfortable all the time, and they see someone like you and they’re like, okay, what the hell is this, and you know, what advice do you give to them for leading a life that can mean something, you know, so when they go up to those pearly gates, that it’s heaven, not hell, right, they can give something back and maybe one day, you know, write a book. The biggest thing is, uh, it’s funny you say write a book, one thing I leave them is this, before I get into that is, if right now, whoever’s listen to this, if you order book right now about your life and you gave to someone what it changed their life for the better, if not, ya get to work, but to answer your question, but what I would tell people right now is this, there’s a process to all this stuff, man, the process starts with you gotta shut off technology, ya go hear.

1:29:49 Go to a dark place in your mind and figure out what the f*** you want to be. You don’t know what you don’t want, because you don’t know what you want to be, because you haven’t spent time, real time with yourself, spend time with yourself, trust me, and once you find that passion and that purpose, your goals, your purpose, everything where they start lining up, and then you’ll find the courage to start that journey from that 2,200.

1:30:42 It’s amazing advice, David. I could talk to you for hours, but you have to promise me you gotta come back and we’ll do this another time. Roger that. The book is Can’t Hurt Me, I can’t recommend this enough, and the audiobook is gangster because after each chapter David’s giving it to you real. I know almost everybody on my team is listen to this, they all went out and did some big things afterwards, and you know it’s an incredible story, and I love what you’re doing, I love how it’s just pure with you, you know, it’s like get the book or don’t, and I’m living my life and doing my thing, that’s it, man, you know, and you’re a great teacher, appreciate it, appreciate your message, I appreciate you getting vulnerable here and wishing you all the best on your journey, man, thank you much, I appreciate, thank you, sir, thank you.